CVE-2026-48988
MediumCVSS 5.3Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk16th percentile — higher than 16% of all known CVEs
Summary
markdown-it is a Markdown parser that contains a denial-of-service vulnerability in versions 14.1.1 and below when typographer: true is enabled. The issue arises from quadratic processing in the smartquotes rule, leading to excessive CPU consumption when parsing quote-heavy markdown.
Risk Assessment
Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to degrade or disrupt service availability, impacting production applications that enable this option for better typography.
Recommendation
It is recommended to upgrade to version 14.2.0 or disable the typographer option to minimize the risk of denial of service.
Original NVD description (English source)
markdown-it is a Markdown parser. Versions 14.1.1 and below contain a denial-of-service vulnerability when typographer: true is enabled, due to quadratic (O(n^2)) processing in the smartquotes rule. The issue stems from repeatedly modifying strings with replaceAt(), which performs O(n) slicing and concatenation per quote character. This can cause excessive CPU consumption when parsing quote-heavy, user-supplied markdown and may let attackers degrade or disrupt service availability. Although typographer is disabled by default, many production apps enable it for smart typography, making the issue relevant. This issue has been fixed in version 14.2.0.